Installing SQL Server vNext on Linux: Part 1 (Prerequisites)

In the first part of this tutorial we will cover the prerequisites for installing SQL Server vNext on Linux.

Note: All screenshots and commands are applied to Ubuntu 16.04

A. Introduction:

In this first part of this tutorial we will learn what the prerequisites are to install SQL Server vNext on Linux. How we can we check the prerequisites with shell commands and how can we connect to a Linux machine from a Windows PC?

SQL Server vNext can be installed on the follow three Linux flavours available in the market as found in the documentation [Microsoft Documentation]:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3

Ubuntu Linux 16.04 or 16.10

Install on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server v12 SP2

B. Prerequisites for Installing SQL Server vNext on Linux:

Linux OS (as mentioned above).

Minimum 3.25 GB RAM required.

Minimum 4.0 GB of disk space required.

Network connectivity required to connect with Internet to download the SQL packages.

Port 1433 TCP should be opened on the firewall for SQL Server connections.

Port 22 TCP (which is default) should be open for SSH (SSH client, is a program for logging into a remote machine and for executing commands on a remote machine) connections.

How to check if the SSH Server is running?

Step 1: Open terminal

Step 2: execute command telnet localhost 22

If the output shows OpenSSH and the version then it means that SSH is open and running on your Linux server.

Below is the output after running telnet localhost 22 command:

Figure 1: Checking SSH is working or not

If SSH is not there then we have to install it separately. We can execute the following command to install SSH:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Below is the output after executing above command in terminal:

Figure 2: Installation of SSH

In my case it is already installed so giving message openssh-server is already the newest version.

C. How to connect to Ubuntu 16.04 from Windows?

To install SQL Server vNext on Ubuntu 16.04, I need to connect remotely to the Linux server on which Ubuntu is installed. I'll cover two ways to connect remotely to a Linux server from a Windows PC:

Using PuTTY

Using mstsc

C.1 Using PuTTY

To connect with Putty we simply need to download and run the executable file available from the PuTTY website (http://www.putty.org).

Figure 3: Connecting Server with Putty

Enter the IP address of the Linux server and click Open. Follow the prompts to log into the Linux server. You will need to use the root or other privileged account that

Figure 4: Entering credentials to connect with Server

C.2 Using mstsc (Microsoft Terminal Services Client)

If we want to remotely connect to the Linux server using mstsc from a Windows server then we need to install Ubuntu Desktop and Xrdp or Xfce (Xrdp is an open source RDP server, which allows us to connect our Linux server with Remote Desktop from a Windows machine). [http://www.xrdp.org/]

Since I am using Ubuntu 16.04 version, I will use xfce Desktop instead, because Ubuntu 12.04LTS Xrdp or Genome desktop is not supported.

The best way to check internet access is to use ping command as above. If in output of command it shows some transmitted and received packets then it means internet is working fine. If it shows only transmitted packets and 0 received packets with 100% packet loss then it is the problem with firewall which we have to resolved with the help of network administrator. [ More Info.. ]

Note: Sometimes internet works fine but we are unable to ping external sites via ping command. [ Click Here For More Info ]

E. Conclusion

As you can see it is important to have all the components in place and working before attempting to install SQL Server on vNext.

I have divided this article into two parts. This part is all about the prerequisites and connecting to the Linux server. We've also covered some basic commands in Linux to check the prerequisites. You can use references also for basic linux commands which

I have given on 5th number. In the second part I will describe how to install SQL Server vNext on Ubuntu 16.04 and make a connection with SQL Server and how to execute SQL queries. So stay tuned.